Add to that the frozen deluge of February snow (I still have a playlist just for shoveling this stuff). Add to that a number of challenges, illnesses, and not a few moments of complete incredulity at the lowbrow behavior of some associates: this has been a season of contretemps.
And seismic revolutions, magma clouds and the decline of comradeship, and the tyranny of hurry and sales.
Add to that a feeling of internal poverty at times. Accompanied by dreams of long bus trips and being back in high school with people who were never in Rockwood. I was stuck one such night in a haunted church camp, vaguely familiar, looking for old friends, but trying to begin Liturgy in a little crowd of chorus sheets and distraction. Then, out of the bus and in my '68 Dodge Polara, a big black bomb of a conveyance, rumbling down an indefinite dirt dust road on a summer hill, my daughters singing Seals and Crofts (you know which one).
During these months, I have been my own Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, and Elihu. At times, I have pretended enough bravado to ask for the whirlwind to speak, but it turns out that I haven't the heart for a tempest or wandering Lear-like on the heath.
Actually, He's been doing so -- speaking, that is -- ineffably, intimately, personally, hidden, blazing and thundering. Quiet.
I cannot complain of theodicy, for I have ever disqualified myself from the bench. The gavel's too big for the am ha'aretz. Blessed are the poor, who are too poor to care for what is fair.
Theodicy is a bourgeois enterprise for the darwinist crowd: it is a spare time reverie for anyone who finds the Yahwistic icon of Christ troubling rather than comforting. We have fallen from our rungs, out of the wealth-protection and position-grasping business. The thieves have beat the crap out of us: thusly, we recognize the Samaritan.
I will wait for the sunrise, wind and rain, the intimations of Trinity and Christ-brightened life, and I will reach my fingers into the dark soil of potent mystery, and stretch out on the green sward of this ossiriand and squint toward the sun.
Rage at the darkness for God dwells therein.
Posted by: s-p | May 12, 2010 at 01:07 AM
That sounds great after Mayday. Stomach and patience are requisite?
It will be a pleasure.
Posted by: Fr. Jonathan Tobias | April 20, 2010 at 02:19 PM
All the same, it's nice to see you writing again. Dr. Hart is beckoning, if you have the patience/stomach for it...
Posted by: Fr. Gregory | April 20, 2010 at 12:44 PM
China, the land, is beautiful. China, the principality, is congruous with all that I think of its peerless export, the Tree of Heaven -- surely, a product of the same process that rendered orcs out of elves.
Posted by: Fr. Jonathan | April 20, 2010 at 11:51 AM
Don't you mean post-Saruman and pre-Scouring? Incidentally (or parenthetically, I'm not sure which), the Scouring of the Shire was about my favorite part -- that and the lyrical stuff about Bombadil. It takes a horra-holic like Jackson to give the best parts a pass. God only knows what he'll do to the Hobbit.
Posted by: Fr. Jonathan | April 20, 2010 at 11:48 AM
Speaking of which, have you read about China's environmental nightmare? It makes Pittsburgh and Cleveland of the 70's look like the Shire pre-Saruman. Shar-Ki indeed!
Posted by: Ben | April 20, 2010 at 11:39 AM
We still have that southern march to do, now that the path's been bisected. On the face of it, it is poetical that we were amongst the last to cross the bridge. But while we were on it, it's practical and a good thing, too, that it was the last, for the thing was industrial and probably made by Sharky's people.
Posted by: Fr. Jonathan Tobias | April 20, 2010 at 11:00 AM
Thank God for the living water poured into thirsty souls. The hills are calling!
Posted by: Ben | April 20, 2010 at 10:45 AM
Though under the waves, memory remains green.
Posted by: Fr. Jonathan Tobias | April 20, 2010 at 10:26 AM
Ossiriand? Nay, Lindon. For Beleriand is passed beneath the waves, and we are bequeathed the Grey Havens.
Posted by: Ben | April 20, 2010 at 09:57 AM